


A Viper At Her Breast

by 9_miho



Series: Seven Made One [5]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Anthropomorphic Personifications, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-22
Updated: 2014-11-22
Packaged: 2018-02-26 13:21:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2653457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/9_miho/pseuds/9_miho
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Oberyn was born too early. He came squalling into the world at this untimely entrance and Dorne came by to see him after the business with the blood and the feeding and cleaning was swept away. Dorne picked up the infant, who glared blankly at her with dark eyes. Then he wormed a hand from his swaddling to grope clumsily for her breast.</p>
<p>She laughed at him and grasped his little palm with her fingers. “And you would use your teeth if I did so let you nurse, child,” she murmured to him.</p>
<p>He smiled at her and she was enchanted. Then he bit her fingers with his first milk teeth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Viper At Her Breast

Oberyn was born too early. He came squalling into the world with his untimely entrance and Dorne came by to see him after the business with the blood and the feeding and cleaning was swept away. Dorne picked up the infant, who glared blankly at her with dark eyes. Then he wormed a hand from his swaddling to grope clumsily for her breast.

She laughed at him and grasped his little palm with her fingers. “And you would use your teeth if I did so let you nurse, child,” she murmured to him.

He smiled at her and she was enchanted. Then he bit her fingers with his first milk teeth.

…

“I have changed your napkins more than once, child,” Dorne said dryly from the bedroom doorway. “And watched you in the Water Gardens. Shyness does not befit you.”

She was wearing sand silk that fitted quite closely to her, including a tight breast band. Before she had come to Oberyn’s room to fetch him on some business or other, she had been teaching some of the squires a few intricacies of grappling. Her skin still glistened with oil because Dorne never felt the need to give anyone, even her most beloved students, a fair fight.

Oberyn, naked but for a sheet he had grabbed, turned even redder under his swarthy skin. He rather valiantly endeavored to not be flustered at being caught, as if there was nothing to be ashamed of. Dorne saw no shame in what she had just walked in (a boy would become a man sooner or later – in part by discovering what else the appendage between his legs was for) on but she gave him a small mercy by turning her head so he could dash to grab his clothes.

Oberyn was now thirteen, she remembered. Now he was at that age of being fiercely proud – and she knew a little of that, not having left the age of, say, twenty for a few centuries.

“Am I always going to be a child to you?” he asked her sullenly, as they walked to the main solar. For all that he was half a step away from a pout, he was a beautiful boy, growing so well with no awkwardness that plague other boys his age. His face was already sharper, as the plump cheeks of childhood melted away.

“All of you are children to me,” Dorne said. “Even Doran. I still see the boy who needed to be fed sweets to calm him during storms.” She reached out to tousle his dark hair and he caught her wrist in a tight grasp.

Dorne met his eyes and smiled. “Oh little viper,” she said affectionately. “Growing so quickly. Sleek, sinewy, eyes never blinking.”

When the whispers named him the “Red Viper,” Dorne laughed and laughed.

…

Dorne rarely took a Martell to her bed. She never took Oberyn to bed herself but she did accompany him to houses of pleasure. They shared the same room, and she watched as she luxuriated amidst sensuous surroundings with beautiful women and men, giving worship to that Summer Islands goddess without even knowing her name or rites. She would sip her wine and eat sweets and occasionally let some lovely boy or girl rest against her for a moment. And sometimes Oberyn himself, not quite drained from the activities would come to put his head on her lap and she would run her fingers through his sweat-damp dark hair and lull him to sleep.

When news of Elia’s death came, Dorne had to trap Oberyn in one of such houses and at one point had to pin him to the beautifully tiled ground with most of her weight as he sobbed and shrieked through a bloody nose. 

…

Dorne quite liked Ellaria Sand, who was as much viper as Oberyn. But Ellaria was content to be somnolent in sunlight, before lashing out at just the right moment and never in haste. 

Ellaria came to Oberyn’s life shortly after Elia’s untimely death. Though perhaps something in Oberyn had died with his beloved sister, Oberyn began to come to the light again, coaxed by Ellaria’s loving arms. For that, Dorne would love anyone, much less the clever, passionate, loving girl who had been introduced to her so carefully.

Dorne liked Ellaria enough to wish to see her as princess, but Dorne knew it will never pass. For all that Ellaria had the bearing of a queen, bearing was not quite enough in this world. So Dorne bought Ellaria expensive jewelry every year until a bastard paramour quite possibly had a better jewel box than brittle, scheming Cersei Lannister for all her gold mines and damn crown of antlers.

…

“So this is what you have been waiting for,” Dorne said to Oberyn as she watched him pack a maester’s kit, one with the standard remedies for nearly any ailment but one she knew also contained many other things most maesters would pretend not to know of.

Oberyn stopped and even in the set of his shoulders she saw a lost little boy, angry at the world and ready to lash out at anything that dared stir lest he start weeping. “What Elia has been waiting for,” he replied stiffly, slowly.

Dorne sighed. “Oberyn, come here,” she said quietly. He looked as if he was ready to refuse but he came to her and stood in front of her seat on his bed.

“Vengeance, sweet boy, should have a greater purpose,” she said to him gently. “Scum does not learn lessons. You eradicate it because it is scum.” She reached out to cup his face in her hands. “Our lovely Elia is gone. Gregor Clegane’s blood is not the elixir to her revival. Especially when he is more an unleashed dog from a monstrous master.”

He stared at her blankly. “Our lives aren’t as long as yours,” he bit out bitterly and turned on his heel to continue packing. “We can’t be resigned to death like you.”

Dorne sighed and rose to her feet, not knowing why she bothered. He was always a willful child. By this time, short of crippling him, all one could do was to guide him gently to a slightly less dangerous, and slightly more productive path as best as one could. Even if she cut his legs up until he was worse off than the Tyrell boy, he would still likely fight out of wherever she had ensconced him.

“I remember each and every one of my children,” she said wearily. As his all too visible grief coaxed hers back to vivid life, she was unable to be truly remonstrative with him. “Even if they pass by as soon as the turn of a sand clock, my little viper. Regardless of if I have them for a breath or a century. Never forget that.”

“Dorne,” he said as she turned to leave. “I simply must,” he explained to her, only able to look at her out of the corner of his eye.

“A man does what he must,” she replied and she did come back to embrace him and kiss his brow. He pressed his face to her shoulder and exhaled shakily against her skin before gently pushing her away.

…

It was a gray-faced Ellaria who crumpled in Dorne’s arms, no longer so queenly as she wept like a child against Dorne’s breast. She cried herself to exhaustion and Dorne left her on her own bed.

Dorne was not weeping. This was not the horror-filled grief she had felt on the news of Elia’s death, sharp and icy. This was something duller but no less consuming, like a pit had formed in her chest and behind her eyes, making the whole world darker and dimmer. 

But it was a grief that was far easier to hide for the moment. She gathered up Oberyn’s youngest and put them to bed together. As they slept soundly, not understanding why their mother was not with them for the night, she murmured, “Viper, your venom ever lingers.”

And then, as she had seventeen years before, she silently wept into her fingers, lest she wake the slumbering girls.

**Author's Note:**

> -As some mood whiplash, as I was editing the second section, I was humming Stephen Lynch’s “Caught Me (Spanking It).” It seemed apropos. /gets killed by Oberyn


End file.
